By posting content to TruckNet, you're agreeing to our terms of use and confirm that you have read our Privacy Policy, and our Cookie Use Policy. You acknowledge that any personal data you post on TruckNet may be accessed by other members of TruckNet and visitors to the forum

Hi ive been a frequent visitor to trucknet at have read a lot of the posts by different members and read a lot of good points but the one that gets to me is when 90% of you are all sitting complaining about politicians and the way we are treated in this country. ie: fuel fags tax dole immigrants and asylum seekers all of which are the bain of the working class persons lives but there may be a solution but im not quite sure as I aint read up on it. Instead of voting for the big 2 lab / cons who in my opinion have taken this country for a ride for long enough why not form our own political party and vote ourselves into power there are surely enough truckers and there families friends out there who would vote for a politician with the best interests of his/her voters at heart. I don't think this would be a difficult thing to set up and to generate a proper peoples manifesto with things that really mattered to us ....see above
Setting up ourselves would give us a strong voice in the house of commons not some Jack [ZB] with no clue of the real world spending three quaters of the day sleeping whilst being paid by us to fight for our rights and needs. I just read the post regarding Alistair Darling and congestion charging is this not a call to get up off our backsides and stop whinging on here and make a proper stand. I understand this would not come cheap but surely if it was to benifit operators large and small they could contribute to funding this venture as they do with the Lab / Cons parties and for what SWEET FA in my opinion

Let me hear your thoughts and if anyone has any info regarding setting up a political party solely for the working class benefit insted of these middle class spongers then let me know

Thankz for your input you guys but I actually expected more of a response to this topic and i am deeply dissapointed about that maybe im wrong but I thought it would be a good idea if we had a voice in power but alas i was wrong and i dont think i would beat Messrs Blair and his cronies with all of 3 votes in a national election LMAO

Sidney, I’m afraid I agree with Wiretwister, although I’d prefer to use the term “influence” and not “Hijack” an existing political party, as starting one from scratch is no mean feat that’s for sure.

For a start, I doubt very many people on here know the first thing about forming a political party, this kind of thing needs setting up by lawyers and requires a lot of cash and takes literally years to build up a profile.

Secondly, there are scores of political parties who all think that if they put there heads together and get their friends/families to vote for them then they’ll be in power come the next general election, it never happens, people will always revert to type and follow their traditional allegiances for fear of letting the other side win by default by voting for the new “fringe” party.

The fact of the matter is that in this country we live in a two-party state, it’s been like that for over a century and will remain like that until possibly a (bloodless) revolution.

Just take a look at all these fringe parties who have come and gone over the past fifteen years:

Green Party
Monster Raving Loony Party
Referendum Party
National Front
Natural Law Party
Legalise Cannabis Alliance (the LCA’s usual three-digit general election result shows how much support there is for this agenda)
Socialist Worker Party

There are many more, but even I’m bored of it now.

So bigsidney, not so much as a poor response, more like staring at the top of a mountain, the only thing is to work with the ZB’s we’ve got.

Dazza wrote:....snip..The fact of the matter is that in this country we live in a two-party state, it’s been like that for over a century and will remain like that until possibly a (bloodless) revolution.

...snip...

Without getting into a history debate I don't think we have a 2 party system now (unless you ignore the Libdems, SNP, Plaid Cymru, DUP, UUP, all of whome have elected representatives at Westminster). New Labour and the Conservative partys are IMHO one and the same. The comment about hijacking a party was pointed directly at the transformation from old to new labour.

Wiretwister, for the purpose of this argument, I am ignoring the Lib-Dems, as they, together with all the other parties you mentioned (Scottish/Welsh Nationalists and the Northern Ireland parties) will IMHO never hold the balance of power in this country. You may disagree, but this is a subject close to my heart and I’ve spent many years studying the British political system.

The so-called “First-past-the-post” system of democracy that we have in this country is by no means perfect, but as far as all the systems of government available it is probably the least-worst option, it is very difficult for small parties like bigsidney's "Truckers party" to get established under FPTP, but the alternatives aren’t without their faults either.

Proportional Representation has a number of flaws, for a start, the fact that a sizeable chunk of MP’s in a PR system are taken off a party list breaks the constituency link and makes them unaccountable to the public.

PR also allows the smaller parties to hold the balance of power and therefore all the policies will have to be “middle ground” and unexciting, this is called “consensus politics”, for consensus read boring.

Dazza wrote:Wiretwister, for the purpose of this argument, I am ignoring the Lib-Dems, as they, together with all the other parties you mentioned (Scottish/Welsh Nationalists and the Northern Ireland parties) will IMHO never hold the balance of power in this country. You may disagree, but this is a subject close to my heart and I’ve spent many years studying the British political system.

Are you sure about that, Dazza?

At the moment our system of government relies on one or other party gaining a working majority in order to hold power. If there is a hung Parliament - something which has happened in the past in this country and still does happen on a regular basis in Italy (which has a very similar Electoral system to ours), then the only way that an effective Government can be formed is if a coalition is agreed between one of the major parties and one or more of the minor ones. In practice, this means that a party such as the Lib-Dems which has a relatively low number of seats in the Commons, can wield a disproportionate amount of power simply by switching allegiances when the need/fancy takes them.

The so-called “First-past-the-post” system of democracy that we have in this country is by no means perfect, but as far as all the systems of government available it is probably the least-worst option, it is very difficult for small parties like bigsidney's "Truckers party" to get established under FPTP, but the alternatives aren’t without their faults either.

Whilst I agree that the alternatives aren't flawless, I cannot possibly support a statement claiming that "First-past-the post" is fair.

The current system is based on Constituencies with unequal numbers of voters, largely alloted on a geographical basis. If you compare the figures for seats in the Commons with those proportionally illustrating the way votes were cast, then you will see a rather wild discrepancy. And that alone, IMHO, renders the whole thing undemocratic.

Proportional Representation has a number of flaws, for a start, the fact that a sizeable chunk of MP’s in a PR system are taken off a party list breaks the constituency link and makes them unaccountable to the public.

Now there I have to agree.

PR also allows the smaller parties to hold the balance of power and therefore all the policies will have to be “middle ground” and unexciting, this is called “consensus politics”, for consensus read boring.

Point 1...Smaller parties can just as easily hold power under the constituency system, see above.

Point 2...So the wouldn't the fact that 50% of the public want one thing and 50% want another mean that "consensus politics" might actually be a very sensible way forward? It has to be better and ultimately more democratic than allowing 40% to do what they want and sod everyone else!

Point 3...Are we to believe that you advocate abandoning the whole idea of a fair and representative government, simply because it would be "boring"!!!!

And I have been…

Oh, I don't know, Daz. I've got some quite strong political views...but I normally make a point of not getting into discussions about them on the forums. The fact that you've goaded me into breaking that particular personal rule means that you can't have sent us all to sleep...

Lucy, whilst I agree that even in the first past the post system the smaller parties can hold the balance of power in the event of a hung parliament, the last time this happened was back in 1974 when the UK had two general elections in one year. The second one paving the way for the coalition between Labour and the Liberals.

Over the past Thirty years the whole political landscape had changed and as a result we have a so-called “Labour party” emulating the policies of the Tories in order to get elected. Up to now it has worked for them. During the Nineties, the Tories abandoned core principles, which cost them millions of votes. The voters by-passed the Libs who were originally the preferred alternative to Labour, which meant the Libs also had to change their approach as people bought into the “New Labour” agenda.

The Liberal Democrats -the third largest party in Britain have shifted so far to the left in recent times that they are now occupying ground once thought of by “Old Labour” die-hards as extreme, and are trying to portray themselves as a credible alternative. How can they be when their ideas are straight out of the Seventies?

Their approach is far more left of centre than the old “Liberal” Party and I don’t think it will win much needed support from the public at large Yes they did win in the recent Brent East by-election but going back to my earlier point, Brent constantly voted for Red Ken Livingstone, therefore it’s not hard to work out that voters in Brent East are by-and-large very left-wing.

I genuinely do not want to get into a slanging match about the Lib Dems, but if you think I’m being biased against them then look at their policies, it’s frightening.

As far as I can remember, Italy has a system of PR in government, yet they cant agree at the best of times even when their government is based on consensus. They have very unstable government and it’s not uncommon to see their MP’s literally slugging it out against one another in the chamber during a crunch vote (see links below) – makes our parliament seem tame.

Id have thought the first thing you have to get right in forming a political party (well one thats going to win), is be sure all of the mouth peices are damned good liars! Maybe thats why so many of the big wigs are former breifs!

I think you might have totally missed something out of your equation BigSidney! The reason why we are truck drivers and not polititians is, probably, mainly, because we don't want to be polititians, we prefer to be truck drivers.

Another thing to bare in mind, possibly, is the answer to this question. Why are the rates for any particular job, low Don't even bother to mention East European companies, etc The rates were low long before these people arrived on the scene After all, everything depends on the rate a company is paid for a job.

Dazza wrote:Lucy, whilst I agree that even in the first past the post system the smaller parties can hold the balance of power in the event of a hung parliament, the last time this happened was back in 1974 when the UK had two general elections in one year. The second one paving the way for the coalition between Labour and the Liberals.

In what way does this preclude it from happening again?

Over the past Thirty years the whole political landscape had changed and as a result we have a so-called “Labour party” emulating the policies of the Tories in order to get elected. Up to now it has worked for them. During the Nineties, the Tories abandoned core principles, which cost them millions of votes. The voters by-passed the Libs who were originally the preferred alternative to Labour, which meant the Libs also had to change their approach as people bought into the “New Labour” agenda.

Maybe this is precisely why a healthy dose of "concensus politics" is what we need....the whole political landscape in this country is now so homogenised that many die-hard party supporters are no longer aware what it is that they are voting in...

The Liberal Democrats -the third largest party in Britain have shifted so far to the left in recent times that they are now occupying ground once thought of by “Old Labour” die-hards as extreme, and are trying to portray themselves as a credible alternative. How can they be when their ideas are straight out of the Seventies?

Very true. But what is the relevance of the Seventies reference? Just because ideas were workable/unworkable at one time doesn't mean they will be workable/unworkable for all times...

Their approach is far more left of centre than the old “Liberal” Party and I don’t think it will win much needed support from the public at large Yes they did win in the recent Brent East by-election but going back to my earlier point, Brent constantly voted for Red Ken Livingstone, therefore it’s not hard to work out that voters in Brent East are by-and-large very left-wing.

True again. That doesn't mean that there aren't others who are starting to think the same way for want of a credible alternative.

I genuinely do not want to get into a slanging match about the Lib Dems, but if you think I’m being biased against them then look at their policies, it’s frightening.

Neither do I, which is why I am not expressing a personal bias one way or the other - simply playing Devil's Advocate because I find it entertaining to do so...

As far as I can remember, Italy has a system of PR in government, yet they cant agree at the best of times even when their government is based on consensus. They have very unstable government and it’s not uncommon to see their MP’s literally slugging it out against one another in the chamber during a crunch vote (see links below) — makes our parliament seem tame.

I stand corrected on that one. I genuinely thought that Italy were also running a Constituency-based system.

By posting content to TruckNet, you're agreeing to our terms of use and confirm that you have read our Privacy Policy, and our Cookie Use Policy. You acknowledge that any personal data you post on TruckNet may be accessed by other members of TruckNet and visitors to the forum